Admission impossible

Of New York’s approximately 150 nursery school programs, there is no single top school, says Victoria Goldman, an expert on Gotham’s world of private education and the author of several guides for parents on the subject. “There are a few, but trying to say which one is best is like trying to say which is better: Harvard or Yale? Stanford or M.I.T.? Why would you do that?”

While it may be a mug’s game to rule whether the nursery school equivalent of Harvard is harder to get into than the nursery school equivalent of Yale, it’s true that the bunch in the top tier indeed constitute what Goldman calls the “baby Ivy League.” The most frequently mentioned names in this elite are the Nursery School at the 92nd Street Y, Episcopal, the Mandel School, Chelsea Day and All Souls School, among a few others. These schools share certain characteristics that set them apart, says Goldman: “They have fabulous directors, faculty and facilities, great programming, and families that are wealthy and famous.”

Directors play a crucial role in making a nursery school a baby Ivy. Goldman says that a true baby-Ivy director will have an average of 20 to 30 years’ experience; this means that, by and large, she’ll have cultivated important relationships with the directors and admissions people at the top “ongoing” schools (meaning K–12).

Of course, the affiliation between a top-tier preschool and an ongoing school can cut both ways. “The ongoing schools don’t want to be dictated to by the nursery schools,” says Cynthia Bing, head of the school advisory service at the Parents League of New York. “They’d rather make their own decisions about what’s right for their school.” And then there’s the issue of diversity in the student body. “More and more, the ongoing schools don’t want their kids to come from the same three nursery schools,” Bing adds.

Still, according to Goldman, having a baby Ivy in your corner can be important if your kid flubs his interview with an ongoing school. “If the director calls up and says, ‘Listen, the kid was having bad day,’ do they listen? Sure.” Naturally, all of this means that your tot will face some stiff competition should you choose to enter the scrum. “You’ll be up against New York’s most successful, famous, wealthy and celebrated families,” says Goldman. No wonder, then, that some parents despair when their kids don’t make the cut. Amanda Uhry of Manhattan Private School Advisors, whose clients pay upwards of $10,000 for her help, says, “If you think education is the most important thing for your child, and you believe that ‘This is New York, and where you start is where you’ll finish,’ then yes, this becomes a really important process.”